Photo Of The Week -- October 5, 2020

From a reader:

My home is in __________  and I work in the oilfield up around Tioga.

I travel through Dickinson regularly. I believe it's been at least a year ago but I think they put in a Tesla charging station. I took this picture this evening. It's the busiest I've seen it since installation. 

This is in the parking lot of the mall a couple blocks north of the I-94 / ND Hwy 22 junction.

Comment: You know, it's interesting. At the Tesla charging site a block or so from the largest (?) dealership (?) in north Texas, the same thing. There are about ten charging posts at the charging station and I seldom see a car there. And what a pain. Driving the car to the site and then leaving it parked there overnight. Can you imagine if you had to leave your laptop at a local kiosk to charge it overnight?

 

So, if you are driving cross-country in your Tesla, and end up in Dickinson at midnight and need a charge, you are going to sit in an abandoned parking lot for thirty minutes waiting for your car to charge? Oh, that's right; great opportunity to take a cat nap.

 

I think it costs about a million dollars to put in one of these charging stations. 

Second best thing about the photo above: the shadows. Low, low sun in North Dakota. Exactly how I remember so many evenings in North Dakota. Great memories.

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Responses

From a reader:

My son-in-law has a TSLA on lease. He goes about five miles to  a Cubs grocery store. The speed charger takes about 45 minutes so, so we went inside and did some grocery shopping.

He was thinking of getting a home charger for the TSLA, but said it took a 70 amp service. His house is wired for 200 amp and this would have required a new service run into his home. So  that is why not many people have a in home Tesla charger..

He thought the whole think was OK, but I thought it was not what I would want..  

My not-ready-for-prime-time-reply:

Yes, I agree. Your son-in-law now has another monkey on his back, as we used to say in the military: a scheduling monkey on his back. 

Sure, he can combine other activities with charging his Tesla, but he is always thinking about doing that ... when "do I have to charge myTesla again?"

That's an interesting insight into a new service run into the home. I was unaware of that. I thought it was nothing more than a "dryer-like" hook-up. This explains why I haven't heard much about these hook-ups in California.  

It will be interesting to see if he renews the lease for another year.

Another response: Corky needs to set up a "Corky's Cookies" kiosk (with coffee) next to these Tesla chargers.  

Regarding re-wiring. I post this for the archives, because I know nothing about this. From a reader:

A clothes dryer is usually a 20 amp 220 volt hook up. Most houses with a 100 Amp or larger can accommodate.

This in addition if the dryer hook up was not in place in original construction.

But  a seperate , or additional 70 amp service could even require a new feed wire  from transformer, and a new electrical box. [Not mentioned: a new transformer will be needed in neighborhoods where more than two or three EVs are garaged.]

With regard to the houses built in the 1950's- 60's that still had fuses in the panel: to switch this over to circuit breakers cost about  $1,500 in rural Minnesota. [Comment: wow, I had already forgotten about fuses. Amazing.]

And this is simple: unhooking old wires from fuses, take out the old fuse panel box, put in the new fuse box, re-connect. To make new circuits .. it is slow, putzy kinda work.

My reply: a great science project for Sophia when she's learning about electricity in school. This week they are studying magnets.